


Variance

by Millereflets



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Analysis, Awkward Romance, Awkwardness, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Ghost in the Shell, Inspired by Hannibal (TV), Mystery, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Romance, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:43:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6245851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Millereflets/pseuds/Millereflets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ghosts of the past rest better if they are left undisturbed. Nobuchika Ginoza knows this better than most people, and for him, it's not that difficult. However, it's much more heartbreaking for Akane Tsunemori. A story of the two people who were thrown together by tragedy, work and haunting memories. A story of how they grow, bend and break as time heartlessly drags them on. Slight AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_ Ginoza  _

 

He was twenty-four and a fast-track bureaucrat when a trip wire cut against his shin and destroyed most of his life.

At that moment, he thought, all of it. In the Isolation facility, in the plant, watching his father's burnt, dying face. Now lying in the bed of his enforcer-issue studio apartment, he wonders what had gone so wrong. He wonders about a lot of things. The mechanism of the booby trap Makishima had laid out for them is often at the forefront of his mind.

At the dead of the night, with Dime lying on top of his feet, he often fantasizes about recreating Makishima's trap. He lets his mind comfortably drift into the machinations of various devices, not all of them innocent in their application. it is quite liberating to think about their mechanisms and to loose  himself in the calculations. Such is the gift of being a latent criminal. 

He no longer has to use all the zen meditation techniques that his  t herapist taught him to keep his hue clear and clean. 

He no longer has to care.

His cybernetic hand feels like his own nowadays, the bio-mechanical nerves now completely  integrated to his biological neural network. The hand is strong enough to crush hardened steel into powder. As an enforcer, he is eligible to get latest and best cybernetic  technology and care. 

Perhaps, all that happens, happens for the best indeed.

Sybil is kind to him, because he is privy it's secret. He was given a n apartment, for example, when Enforcers are generally supposed to stay in dorms. He was allowed to keep  D ime. He was allowed to be authorized for an assault Dominator. He is allowed to work as a statistical analyst alongside Shion, and he is allowed to visit the forensic lab. 

Sybil is indeed very kind, when it visits him in the form of Chief Kasei.

 

“ _You have been allowed privileges only a handful of Latent criminals have been allowed. And by handful, I mean exactly that,” She caustically tells him, her fingers rapidly manipulating the holo-rubics. “Remember that, Mr. Ginoza. Sybil is kind to all who deserve it. For the undeserving...”_

_She never completes the sentence, looking up to gaze at his face over her half-moon spectacles. The gaze is supposed to scare the shit out of him._

_It doesn't._

“ _Of course, Chief Kasei.” he inclines his head to her._

_ You need to keep me silent more than I need that apartment, and the lab privileges. The myth of Sybil being a benevolent program is more important than an Enforcers life. The myth of you being a human being is more important my life. it's easier to catch a fly with honey, than with vinegar, afterall. _

“ _And, Ginoza. The offer of rehabilitation of your admirable deductive powers is still open.” Kasei presses her lips together, the gesture meaning to turn out as friendly smile, and failing miserably._

“ _I do not understand, why you offer me the rehab.” He asks her carefully. “I am not quite qualified, as evidenced by my crime coefficient.”_

“ _That is not a big hurdle to Sybil.” She dabs her thin lips with a monogrammed kerchief. “The reason, until, you decide to join the rehab program, is classified.”_

 

He does wonder if he should take up Kasei on the offer,  just to find out what incentive his brain held for Sybil. 

*********

 

Two months after he had become an enforcer, he visits his father's dorm room, after an email finds him, telling him to urgently clear out the stuff, so that the room could be re-assigned.

He makes the journey.

The dormitory compound st ands on the top of a small hillock,  a large hexagon surrounded by a concrete wall. Old, colossal Magnolias  and cherry trees  st and just inside the walls, ringing the white building. Standing at the base of any one of it's base, a filigree of shadows falls on your face and the blue sky was feathered with green.  The  campus was abundant in f ive things—Trees, space, scanners,  drones  and security cameras

The concrete path leading from the gate is neatly lined with mahogany trees and contin ues  long and straight across a broad square, two two-store sterile white dorm buildings facing each other on either side of the path. They  are large with  long, grilled  windows and every room ha s a small balcony. He s ees cleaning drones and surveillance drones whizzing about. 

When he entered the building where his father's room was,  it was through a corridor so sterile and clean that it reminded him of a hospital corridor sans the smell , lined with security cameras and scanners. The corridor  is tiled with gray marble and he could hear hole-televisions and play stations ping through open pneumatic, heavily frosted doors. Beyond the two dormitories, the path le ads up to the entrance of a two-story security building. Broad green lawns fill the square, and the edges  are flower-beds full of roses and dahlias and chrysanthemums and sprinklers ca tch the sunlight and glint as they turn in their 360 º arcs. When he came to balcony of his father's room, he saw the back of the building had a swimming pool, a football field and a couple of tennis court s . The complex was  a  beautifully decorated and superbly equipped jail,  fully capable of containing and if the necessity arose, to eliminate the two-hundred latent criminal enforcers that it housed. 

He wonder s how he would have felt about living here. 

Not bad, he concludes . The room  is quite spacious and there  is an attached  bathroom . His father was a clean man, and the table was neat, only with his tablet, some paper and pens. There was an old fashioned bookcase—Ginoz a wondered where Masaoka had acquired the old thing from— filled with actual paper books.

This is where he discovers the reason behind Sybil's name.

It's an old dog-eared book, printed first in—he sees in 1973, 140 years ago. This copy was printed in 2030, quite some time ago.

It attracted his eyes first because of the golden print on the spine of the book—Sybil. He picks it up and sits down on the synthetic fur rug on the floor, interested and inquiring.

It is a book about a young woman who is haunted and hunted by the different personalities her brain had invented, in an attempt to re-imagine the reality around her to be something tolerable.

Sybil—a girl who had 16 different personalities, but was perceived to be one person.

Sybil—the system run by 1,200, 000 different criminally asymptotic brains, believed to be a single program, a single entity. 

Ginoza sits in the darkening room. Outside, through the window, the moon glimmers dimly, and he sighs, the knowledge of his father's wisdom and his own memories sitting heavily on his finger-tips, as heavily as the blue silence that surrounds him, in this purple twilit room. He feels a sharp stab of belated kinship with his late father, Tomomi Masaoka.

_Is this why you became a latent criminal, dad? Did realization taint you, outcast you? Did you loose hope like me? What else did you know, dad, and how can I know what you knew?_

There is a soft wind blowing through the open balcony, and he can hear leaves rustle, and for the first time, Ginoza feels the feeling of orphan burn into his fragile, papery bones.

It's poetic, really.

 

********

He finally gathers everything he needs and wants,  finishing up around 20:00. Masaoka had only a few belongings, and he takes them all. He packs them up, the books, some clothes, paints and paint-brushes, the tablet and little day-to-day things.  The bookcase he takes down first, and puts it into the backseat of the small car he was given by the MWPSB for the day. 

As he runs up back to get the second lot of stuff, he comes face-to-face with Akane Tsunemori, who is coming out of a room on the left of the same corridor as his father's, maybe five doors down. She  is  carrying a box piled high with  stuff.

It could be either Kagari's or Kougami's room, but his intuition tells him it's Kougami.

She looks too small to carry such a big box with it's seen and unseen burdens. It's sad how he processes the view—comparing her with an ant with load.

She had seen him always. She can't wave at him, arms being loaded, so she gives him a smile—both awkward and hopeful.

He, feels the familia rity of the guilt and self-reproach.

_After their last talk about why he used to wear glasses, he had made it a point to stay away from her. The bonds they shared were too painful to discuss, and he was so full of self-hate that he couldn't even look at her, much less talk to her._

_Akane had made attempt after attempt. She was an extraordinarily bad cook, but he would often find heat-sealed packets of home-made misdo and udan at his desk. Once he found a small cactus on his desk._

_He had wondered who had told her of his proclivity towards plant-life._

_She had approached him outside MWPSB, and every single time, like the selfish bastard, he had turned away, too drawn into his own circle self-hatred and self-recrimination. Every one of those time she had respectfully walked back. He hated him for abandoning her, hated himself for being unable to respond to her grief, when she had shouldered his. He wanted to apologize and that seemed quite impossible, because of his overpowering desire to run away from the past._

_Akane had stuck around, with her kind smile and her slowly improving home-cooked food._

 

They stand, facing each other, thinking what to say. Two months have made Ginoza's mouth a graveyard of words, and he flounders.

“Hello.” he says, the word so hollow that he wants to cringe.

“Hello, Mr. Ginoza,” she says, “Do you need some help?”

they both know the reason behind each others visit.

“I don't think you are really in a position to help me,” He tells her, “Anyway, I am nearly done.”

“Well, in that case,”Akane smiles again, because the conversation sounds hopeful, “I will wait for you here, and we can go down together, perhaps?”

This is the beginning, he thinks. This is the beginning of the beginning and the root of the root, and if I don't do this now, I can never do it— they are not like ships passing each other in the dark of the night—but they will be, if not this.

“You can come in. I'm clearing out my father's stuff.”

 

***********

“Do you want to come out for a cup of coffee?”, Akane offers as he is securely loading the bookcase into the bubble car. 

“Now?”

“Yeah? There's a new coffee-shop around the corner and it's quite okay, I hear.”

“From whom? Shimotsuki?”

Akane laughs at the skepticism in his tone. She knows Ginoza doesn't get along with Mika.

“She has quite good taste in bistros, you know.”

He snorts in quiet derision.

But they do go out for coffee, after remotely instructing the cars to go their respective apartments.

The place is called “Talisman”, and it reminds him of the time, they had ventured out in the commufield together. It is a reminder to better times and the pain it brings is not quite unexpected. It's lit  in dark pastel tones and Beethoven's Archduke Trio is playing in the hidden speakers. 

They settle into a table by the window-side, and it has started to rain outside—fat drops stick to the glass, before flowing down as small rivers. They remind him of tear-tracks.

Ginoza sits quietly as Akane scrutinizes the  menu closely, tongue in cheek. He listens to the music, the music that had been composed by Beethoven for the Austrian prince Rudolf. 

He is a fan of old classical music, from the time he was introduced to the piano and the viola, at the age of three by his musician mother. 

It brings old, dim memories.

The trio is played by the Oistrach trio. He loves their structured, classic approach to the music.

“What do you want, Mr. Ginoza?”

He starts at Akane's voice, and she is looking at him, one eyebrow raised, waiting for his order.

“Same as you, Ms. Tsunemori.”

her second eyebrow joins the first one and both threaten to disappear in her hairline.

“Really?”

“Really, what?”

before she can answer, the serving drone is here, and she touches the serving menu and swipes her card. Two decaf cappuccinos. He would have preferred the caff one, but that's okay.

She turns to him, and grins. “Since when do you call me,'Ms. Tsunemori'?”

He shrugs and smiles. The muscles of his face feel a little frozen.

“Please call me Akane.”

It is more than a salutation she is offering him, and she knows it. It is a gesture of respect, a gesture from the respect he had earned from her when he was a senior inspector and not the dregs of society.

“Please call me Ginoza.”

In return he offers her informality and she gladly takes it up.

 

*********

“You look much better.” She remarks, sipping her decaf.

Ginoza frowns at her. “Seriously?”

“You seem to fit your clothes better.”

“Well, I have been working out,” he confesses, leaning back and stretching his long back. “The enforcer job requirements are quite different from the inspector one. Also, now I can indulge in—what do you say, more violent forms of exercise, now that I don't have to worry about my psycho-pass.”

“So there are perks of being a latent criminal.”

“Only if you are an enforcer, I suppose.”

They smile and it seems effortless at this point.

They talk for a long time, ordering dinner at one point. They are careful though, when they refer to the past as the every slip holds pain.

“I'm sorry.” Ginoza says at one point.

Akane doesn't need to ask why.

“I knew you were unable to, Ginoza-san.” she says, softly and kindly. She had always been the kindest of all of them, but now touched with tragedy, she has become more kind. “We all deal with things like this differently. You don't need to justify yourself.”

He isn't resolved of his negligence towards her, whatever she said.

But at least now, he knows how to look for retribution.

 

*************

 

 

 

He misses Shinya Kougami too. In that respect, he is not much different from Akane Tsunemari. Nowadays, the feeling of the dominator is an enjoyable feel when his finger clasp around the smooth carbon-fiber handle. Nowadays, he dives into Nietzsche, without the itchy compulsion to check his hue.

He feels like a wolf, nowadays.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As he gets into bed, Dime at his side, Ginoza is overwhelmed with a hollow feeling of loneliness as he falls asleep, the back of his flesh hand tingling.

Ginoza wonders what character from what book he is.

Is it tragic really, he wonders. And he makes lists in his mind.

One arm less, Father less, demoted to enforcer, apartment seized, savings frozen.

Cybernetic arm, less stress of psycho-pass rising, Dime still here.

These are the variables.

He sometimes wonders why his psycho-pass never stabilized. There are more than enough reasons, but at the end of the day he does believe that Sybil system is required in this eustressed society of today.

He wonders about a lot of things.

What is the true measure of crime, he thinks, is it the intent to commit it? Or is it the consequence of a violent action? Is it also not related to the ability to commit the crime?

As his time as inspector, he remembers many cases where they had neutralized people when they hadn't even planned to commit a crime, much less commit one, due to a variation of reasons. Taking him as an example, he does not intend to really commit a crime.

What are we doing? He wonders

Questions he had buried deep down, rise up now and then, just like his psycho-pass.

He wonders if he should calibrate the rise against the thoughts.

He wonders and wonders as the earth lurches around the sun, and stars set and rise.

***********************

It's a windy, sunny day.

There are birds clucking, and children play in Tokyo, in parks, and theme parks and holo-holes, and there is an atmosphere of general cheer all around. The sun is not too hot, not too weak, and there are fluffy clouds in the periwinkle blue sky.

The mood inside the blue-lit room of their division is not as glum as usual. The enforcers might want to account that to the absence of Mika Shimotsuki rather than the weather, but the relaxed mood has allowed Hinakawa to plug in his extreme isolation headphones, and Tougane has disappeared off to train some more with the newly issued assault Dominators. Yayoi and Shion are lost in some obscure corner if the lab.

Ginoza watches Akane lying on her back, with her virtual gear over her eyes. She was probably trailing around in some commufield. He wonders what commufield she walks in now, since they had effectively screwed up Talisman's domain. Well, after the real one got flushed down the toilet in pieces. The blame is not really theirs.

Thinking back, those times seem one thousand years ago.

Ginoza wondered what would’ve his father's reaction to his demotion.

He doesn't ponder over it, much.

The ghosts of the past rest better if they are left undisturbed.

***********************

Ginoza doesn't sleep well.

Waking up in the middle of the night, from a dream that is full of red and silver, his mind is torn with the ghostly pains curling all over non-present left arm. He closes his eyes and tucks the cybernetic arm against his arm as his body remembers the agony of the limb being crushed. His heart races as fast as it can, running from the dreamscape he was trapped in, seconds later.

The pain subsides a few minute later. The uneasiness in the pit of his stomach makes it roil. He is bathed in cold sweat, and he can feel it dripping down his back. He takes off his t-shirt, and throws it on the floor, and switches on the small white lamp beside his bed.

He feels like puking, but he decides not to. The dream makes his skin, his pillow, his room smell like smoke and blood. Ginoza's tongue is coated with metal as he bites the inside of his cheek raw.

After a while, when his stomach has settled a bit, he turns off the light. The apartment is bathed in the cool light coming from the neon lights inside the complex, and mutes all hues to blue and gray. His refrigerator glimmers dully as he opens it, taking out the one-liter bottle of cheap whiskey.

When he stops, he had gone through almost half the bottle. He feels woozy. It's okay, he tells himself. Makishima is dead, and he is here.

His father is dead too. He knows he is drunk, and he feels sad and pathetic. He laughs to himself, because he refuses to cry and it sounds a bit like weeping, and he lies down on the floor, and curls up on himself. He wants to feel like a child again.

 _You are loosing this war,_ he whispers, sinking slowly into the green depths of alcohol-fueled sleep.

*********************

On a Friday night, he returns home so tired and done-for, his hands shake as he pets Dime.

He had been working at the Division HQ almost ceaselessly, since Monday, since this case had come in and hadn't slept for nearly four days. It had been a murder spree among the homeless and a crafty killer who avoided the scanners by staying indoors unless it was absolutely necessary for him to go out, or it was time to kill. The case had taken them this long, mostly because of the perpetrator's complete disconnection to the people he was targeting, being a internet celebrity and the almost complete lack of evidence.

Ginoza had had flashbacks throughout the week, and he had been hyper-aware of the fact that he was slipping into Kougami's skin. And he has even more aware of the fact of Akane's eyes on him.

She had been looking at him, glancing at him more often than usual as he paced around jumpily, unable to eat, unable to sleep and barely alive on water and choc-protein bars, angrily fending off Shimotsuki. Ginoza's manner even had set off Tougane, who had taken to hanging out in the archival room for the next of the week. It had been mostly him and Akane, and he could feel her eyes on him and now and then, and it had sent him off in bursts of nervous energy.

He had been unbalanced, and unsettled, the world tipping between his teeth, until on Thursday, which dawned gray and cold, the pieces of evidence and his hypotheses had resolved into a cohesive theory.

After that, they had gone to hunt, and Ginoza had led, feeling beastly and uncontrolled.

On Friday evening, as the team celebrated the week's hard work, Ginoza, feeling as if he had overdosed on exhaustion, slipped into the room where they had their workstations, and had sat down, wanting to document the case,( he hadn't let go of his filing habit), when he heard the patter of feet.

Too tired to react, he had waited till Akane was standing next to his desk and looked at her clear chocolate eyes with his red-rimmed ones.

She patted his hand with her own. “You can do it later.” She said. “Please go home and rest, and eat. Take it off till Monday.”

“It's not as bad as it looks.”

“Go home, Ginoza-san. Get some sleep and rest. I will drop in later, maybe on Saturday.”

The unexpectedness of her offer made him leave slowly, nodding. The ghost of her touch lingered on the back of her palm. It was the first intentional and unwarranted physical contact he had had in a month maybe.

Back home, he looks at himself at the bathroom mirror. His eyes are sunken, ringed with purple lines, and he can see the blue veins of his cheeks and throat.

He nearly falls asleep in the shower.

As he gets into bed, Dime at his side, Ginoza is overwhelmed with a hollow feeling of loneliness as he falls asleep, the back of his flesh hand tingling.

****************************

  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is wearing a black t-shirt and loose gray pants and his hair is mushed and he looks so young and the robot arm is glinting dully. Akane feels cold and sad and warm and she attempts to smile.

Chapter 3

 

_Akane_

 

Latent criminals aren't allowed to lock their doors, so Akane slips in unnoticed by Ginoza, early Saturday morning.

The house is not too far from Akane's apartment. It's a small gated compound tucked away in a corner of the Ministry of Welfare's vast grounds, and she could see security cameras and armed drones all over the place. There are signs of Sybil's judgment everywhere. This is also where Joji Saiga lives, as well. Akane had been here before.

The house itself is small and elegant with a white picket fence, and about a bit away from it, there are five houses, two beside Ginoza's house, three facing it and the other two, and paths full of pebbles separate all of them and the pebbles clatter when the drones trundle down them. There are old, beautiful trees all around and Ginoza's house is latticed with the shadows of the two beautiful trees next to it. She doesn't know what trees they are. As she gets close, she spots another three tree behind the house, and she smiles. Ginoza must not hate his house too much.

There is a slice of lawn in front of it, and it's full of over-grown emerald grass and tiny white grass-flowers like tiny stars in a green ocean.

The inside of the living room is furnished, and there is no holo-projector. Dime was slumbering on a pillow on the small sofa, and as she enters he jumps from his seat and pads over to her, tail wagging, tongue lolling. He remembers her, from their two months together when Ginoza was in the isolation facility.

Akane bends and pets the orange husky wolf-dog (She's pretty sure Dime was a wolf-dog), and then scratches him slowly under the ear. Dime sits down in comfort.

She wonders where his owner is.

The door to the single bedroom is closed, and she wonders if she should knock. After five minutes of indecisive glancing about and gingerly petting Dime, she decides to make a cup of coffee from the open kitchen counter at one corner of the room and wait.

She opens the shelves of the kitchen cabinet, is not really surprised when she finds it neat and stocked up. The coffee-maker dings in a minute or two and she trudges back to the couch, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand.

As she settles, Dime jumps back on the pillow beside her, and puts his head on her lap. Akane thinks he misses her.

“I miss you, too,” she tells him fondly.

She wonders if Ginoza takes him on a walk.

She wonders if she should take Ginoza for a walk. And for a second, Dime and Ginoza become parallel lines in her mind, and it's heartbreaking.

She remembers the days when Ginoza was a inspector and she remembers his proclivity towards long, solitary walks, and the times when they were in night duty, he used to walk out around 3'o'clock and roam about the streets near NONA tower. There is melancholy shooting through her heart as she realizes he is deprived from all that, when he is needs it the most.

She wonders how cold his heart will grow as he gets more and more muzzled as time goes by.

Akane longs to ask Ginoza how he is, how he is doing, how is he living. She wants to ask about the Kougami-shaped hole in their lives in their lives. She wants to get into his head, because he is the only one left.

Nobody else remembers.

Nobody will remember after they are gone. Nobody will remember how Kougami and Ginoza used to play shogi when they had a night-shift together, Akane watching and Masaoka smiling. Nobody will remember Ginoza's stolen walks when he sneaked away, the night dying all around them. Nobody will remember Kougami's fall. There is nobody she can ask other than him because he's the only one, and grief is shooting up her jugular like cold realization.

She has a packet of Shinya Kougami's cigarettes in her apartment and everyday she puts one between her lips and sits, unlit.

She wants to talk to him about Kougami. She wants to know.

Akane closes her eyes, suddenly tired. There are birds chirping outside.

She can't. He has his own pride, and she has hers. She can't and doesn't resent him for his long silences, because she herself has nothing to say.

**********

Akane has almost finished the coffee when Ginoza comes out of his room. He looks at her, muted surprise in the lines of his mouth, and sleep swimming in his green eyes.

He is wearing a black t-shirt and loose gray pants and his hair is mushed and he looks so young and the robot arm is glinting dully. Akane feels cold and sad and warm and she attempts to smile.

“Hey,” he says, his voice still sleepy.

“Hey,” she tells him. “Dropped by, as sworn.”

“Good for you,” he gives a narrow smile, blinking. “Do you mind waiting, while I…?”

“Of course not,” Akane shrugs off a disgruntled Dime and stands up. “I will make tea, or coffee?”

Dime yaps in protest of the dislocation of his head.

Ginoza doesn't answer immediately. He is staring at Dime, and though his face is unreadable, Akane knows he is thinking about the isolation facility, courtesy of which Akane and Dime's friendship had grown.

She feels lost, and displaced and so sad to see him like this, confined and haunted and walls of glass wrapped around him. Her ribs ache and she wants to touch his arm, but she knows it is not welcome. Not now. The world is quiet.

“You really don't have to.” Ginoza breaks the spell, “But coffee sounds good.”

He smiles at her, and she smiles back.

“I'll be back.”

He disappears into the bedroom. And there is a lump is her throat.

He comes back in about ten minutes, and she has a cup of hot black coffee on the small wicker table in front of the couch. He looks paler in contrast to his dark get-up and there are hints of purple around eyes. He doesn't look well rested, but he looks much better than Friday.

Akane remembered his gaze as he stared at the scattered evidences of the computer screen, hungry and calculating, and it had reminded her of Kougami, his hunger and desperation. Kougami's ghost seems to slip under Ginoza's skin and she remembers her fear and loss.

Now, she looks for the signs and there are none, but she can't let go of the shreds of fear she feels. She doesn't want him to run wild too. She wants him, here, safe.

“Tired?”, she asked him, as he cupped his palms around the coffee mug.

“A little,” he says, eyes far away and half-closed. “Thank you for coming.”

She shakes her head and smiles. “It's fine. I have an off-day anyway.”

“Aren't you supposed to chill today?”

“Well,” Akane says. “I have a plan.”

He raises his eyes at her. She had made of a plan of sorts for today. And she was glad that she had, because Akane wants him to be around people. She doesn't think isolation is good for him, just one more chance for him to sink deeper into his grief.

“ _Hello.” She says awkwardly to the white-clad pale figure sitting on the other side of the glass. There is a microphone and a speaker in front of her and the same sits in front of him, the only communication across the thick bulletproof glass. She had been finally allowed to visit Ginoza._

_It's white all over here. She feels restless, and Ginoza, if he didn't have black hair, could have blended into the background. She feels the cold air of the conditioner raise the hair on the nape of her neck._

“ _Hello.” He replies, and his voice, or maybe it's just the microphone, sounds dark and rough with unuse._

“ _How are you doing?”, She asks him, voice tentative. She doesn't know what to ask him. She doesn't even know what to address him by. He looks pale and his hair was overgrown but, somehow, even in those loose white dressings, elegant. His face looks sharper, as if the one and the half months in the isolation facility and loss had chiselled and chipped it away, revealing the fine lines underneath._

_She had gone to Masaoka's small memorial service, held by Shion and Yayoi, in the enforcers' dorm. There was only one other inspector there, Risa Aoyanagi. Ginoza hadn't been allowed to come. Cruel, she had thought._

“ _How's Dime?”, He asks her, abruptly. He never makes eye contact with her, Akane notices. He just stares at a spot over her left shoulder. They are slightly unfocused, and it's maybe just her imagination, the vivid grass greeness of his eyes seem to have dulled. It's probably an effect of the drugs they give him. His wrists look bony._

_Irrationally Akane wanted to cry and pour her heart out, and bring the man on the other side of the glass some measure of peace. It hurt her to see him like this, and she couldn't leave him here like this, drugged and yet, sadness and loss etched into the lines of his face. Displaced and about to be forgotten._

“ _He is fine. He's very energetic”, she said, and then because, she was foolish and emotional:_

“ _I have an offer for you.”_

“I thought we could go to this dog-restaurant downtown.” She offers. Her heart beats a little fast at the thought of rejection. “Since none of you go out much.”

He is fast to react to the slip.

“Can't go out, you mean.” he sounds slightly sarcastic, the tone modulated to minimise the jab he can't really help.

Akane blushes. “Yes. Sorry.”

“Sounds good,” He smiles slightly, apology accepted and his voice is scented with hope.

Akane grins properly for the first time in two weeks.

**************

  


  


  


  


  


  
  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are the beginnings of the new life at the root of the root.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They sit face-to-face, obscured and distorted by the subtle play of light on shadows.

Chapter 4

 

Dime keeps his head out of the window, throughout the car ride, and occasionally barks at passing cars.

Akane chats nonchalantly with Ginoza, filling up the silence in the car. He is sitting on her right, looking at her and listening. His face is unreadable, he has become so much more closed since his demotion—Akane thinks, and his seawater eyes hooded.

She tells him about the day-to-day things. She tells him about the heavy load of paperwork and playfully apologizes to him for burdening him so much paperwork when he was holding the office. There is a small flash of purple and green in his eyes. 

She talks about the troubles she has with Mika and making her understand the finer points of law enforcement and judgment regarding a dominator—in general the purpose of human being being involved in a system which can be completely manned by drones operating under the Sybil's eyes—something that shouldn't be that hard to teach the junior inspector, yet turns out to be quite a tedious a job.

Her memories drift back to the days of the past—when she had been working alongside a inspector in denial, rather than one who was complacent with the System—both almost to the point of bigotry.

Ginoza smiles, his narrow lips curving without much humor.

“How is your hand?”, she asks him carefully.

“Quite fine.”

She nods.

Inside she wants to ask him so much, not just about Kougami, but also about small personal things. How are his plants? What does he every night? Does he remember the good times he had with her dad, now that he is gone? She wants to know,  What images do you have set for your holo-tablet wallpapers? Favorite ice cream flavor? What do you do to get over your anger?

She wants to know if he believes in God.

Her rib cage and spine aches with the  dead  weight  of them. 

She wants to be angry with him, now—as she had wanted to, in the past four months—for turning away from her, for his silence, for being unable to talk to him about the past. But in the end, all she can feel is sadness, as his sorrow paints her soul with blue fingers, sitting together in the small car.

The dog-restaurant looks elegant and expensive. She knows Ginoza doesn't have any money—he is paid by the right to walk in the streets. It's only once, Akane tells herself, she can treat herself once.

The insides are decorated tastefully in the latest art decor styles. There was soft tinkle of instrumental music, something she couldn't recognize. They  are shown to a secluded niche, dimly lit with ocher and chrome shades, and Dime  is given a comfortable cushion to seat on.

They sit face-to-face, obscured and distorted by the subtle play of light on shadows.

She is so tired of pretending to be okay and smiling and laughing and caring and only crying when she is alone on her bathroom floor. She is tired of trying to smile for other people when she can barely breathe for herself. She feels bruised and angry at all of them—Kougami, Kagari, Masaoka, and now the man who sat opposite to her, clothed in apparent indifference.

_Tell me what you feel,_ She closes her eyes.  _I feel so alone in this, tell me you are there too. Tell me I'm not alone._

“How are you doing?”, he asks suddenly, and she opens her eyes.

“I'm okay,” she tells him, like the fool she is. “I'm here. What about you?”

“I'm fine,” He replies, fingers drumming on the edge of the light.

They are silent, the lying assurances hanging between them. It is only broken by the serving bot as it arrives with food. Dime yelps with delight.

“You work too hard.” he tells her abruptly, spearing a piece of food with his fork.

She smiles wanly. “Mika is too young, and I don't really have any other engagements.” Spooning some lemon rice into her mouth, she looks at him. “And besides, it wasn't me who worked myself to the ground last week on the Katanagi case, Ginoza-san.”

He snorts. “Well, that's the only reason I'm still here, and we are talking.”

Akane dips her head.

“I know.” She says.

He shifts, restless. He has grown so much more restless, Akane thinks. It has worked the opposite way for them. For her, reading lengthy reports at a stretch is no longer an issue, no longer a dreaded thing. She wonders what that might mean.

“You really have no other engagements?”, He cocks his head, his glass-green eyes oddly speculative, and a little puzzled.

“Why do you ask?”

“You are only 21 years old.” he shrugs. “You should be seeing people.”

His tone is so patronizing, coming from someone in his twenty-fifth year, Akane can't help a giggle.

He looks more puzzled.

“I really don't have any other engagements, believe me.” Akane clarifies to him. “Also, I haven't seen you for quite a long time.”

“You wanted to see me?”

Akane feels she's walking on a knife-edge. She can give him this piece of information, let him know she cared, and run the risk of walled out completely, knowing Ginoza. Or she could turn back now. She could lie.

She could let him be and walk away, like Kougami had done to her. She was crossing some sort of an invisible barrier, and Akane hoped it was worth it, all of it, in the end.

She leans forward, on her elbows, and looks him squarely in the eye.

“I worry about you, Ginoza-san.” She tells Ginoza, “I worry about what is happening to you. I have lost my team once,” She swallows, “I don't want to lose it again.”

Ginoza looks unreadable. His face looks lost in the shadows, and now that is all out, Akane tiredly lets her eyes fall to his wrist, the one that is on the table. His skin is alabaster pale, and the lattice work of blue and green veins just under his skin makes her feel tender. She wants to touch his long, thin fingers.

“Thank you, Akane.” He sounds genuinely grateful. She looks up, and encounters the blankness in his face, and _something_ in his eyes. Then he surprises her by saying: “But you should be taking more care of yourself than worrying about me. I will be fine. You—I don't know.”

“Why do you say so?”, Akane asks him, feeling a little self-conscious. She was fatigued, but was it so blatantly written on her face? She hoped not. More worrying was if Ginoza could read her like an open book or not.

“I don't know how you feel about Kougami's uncalled for departure.”

Akane feels shock shooting up her jugular in a burst of cold awareness.

They are there, in that moment of truth and it wasn't worth nothing. In front of her, Ginoza's eyes look at her like he is trying decipher an unknown script.

“I don't know how you are doing, Akane.” He breathes, heavily, and raises one hand to rake through his unruly hair. There are shadows in his eyes, in ways they weren't there before. Or maybe she never had looked closely enough. Now, as the world is skating away from underneath her toes, and she is filled something like loss and gratitude, she can't look away.

“I miss him.” She manages. She can't tell him how much, or when, or why, because if she starts talking, she might fall apart. It is just not Shinya Kougami. It is Kagari's face, Masaoka's smile, her own innocence, and it is also him. She misses all of that, the ghosts of the past.

“Do you miss him?”

Ginoza's eyes unfocus for a while, and his eyes seem like murky emeralds. “Sometimes.”

“Masaoka?”, She feels so timid, so scared—the moment is a singular one, and she doesn't want it to end.

Ginoza looks at her with eyes that are hunted and haunted, and she knows, he dreams too.

“Sometimes.” He repeats, his voice heavy and dark.

Akane keeps her hand on his flesh hand. He lets her keep it for a few seconds, and then flips his hand and catches her small palm, in his larger one. Pressing it for a second, he lets go.

Akane offers him a watery smile, and he nods in return.

  


  


  


  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review me. It will be really helpful to know what readers think about what I am writing and where I am going wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yes,” She says and the word shivers from her mouth.

Chapter 5

 

“How do you think I’m doing?”, Akane blurts out.

They are finishing desserts, Ginoza sipping strong black coffee, and Akane indulging in a beautiful confection of frozen whiskey icecream, bitter rum-chocolate cookies, and maple syrup. She had wanted to order a beer, her new-found delicacy, but Ginoza’s presence had made her feel more than a little hesitant.

“As in?”

She bites one of the cookies and waves her hand. “Running the division. Being the Shepherd One. Being you.”’

She misses to catch herself. The heavy dinner, dim lights and the comfortable ambiance is making her slow.

Ginoza doesn’t react much. He laughs a little and looks at her, and loneliness swirls inside Akane.

“Doing quite a good job,” He tells her. “Better than I could ever do.”

The unexpected compliment warms her and she grins at him. The setting is quite comfortable. Dime is resting sleepily against her leg.

“Thank you.”

“Well,” Ginoza shrugs and grins a little. He has nice teeth, Akane thinks. “I think I was always suited to this kind of job—”, He waves at himself, “--than being an inspector. I feel more—free?”

Akane wonders what is making his tongue so loose. It is her who is consuming alcohol of any sort.

She nods at him though. She doesn’t know what else to say or do.

But it seems he has more to say.

“It is quite liberating to operate without checking my hue every few minutes.” He finishes.

It is a one way to look at it, she thinks. Much before all of this, she had the this strange feeling about Ginoza—that his zealotry stemmed from a lack of faith, purposefully blinded by his conscious actions—rather than like Mika, whose zealousness came from the faith she held in Sybil’s judgment, which was almost religious.

She looks at him from under her eyelashes, careful not to let him see her observing.

There are purple circles under his eyes, and he looks pale and tired, but there is a decided lack of rigidness about him and an aura of energy about him—a feeling of confidence. He is dressed in a navy turtleneck and jeans, his limbs loosely arranged as he sips his drink. He was always good-looking, Akane thinks, but now that has turned into a sort of elegant beauty. Not like Kougami’s, who looked like a wolf on the prowl. Ginoza looks like a snow-leopard, she decides.

And then she blushes.

She doesn’t know why her thoughts are running amok. Looking at Ginoza, his long legs and casual fingers, makes her want to take him out for a dance. She hasn’t danced for so long—she hasn’t touched a male body for so long, not with desire or intention at least.

Akane’s thoughts run scarlet on the beige of her mind.

It’s the loneliness, she concludes sadly. it’s long, cold nights and dead dawns she spends in her bed, submerged in the depths of a dreamless sleep, the confused and slightly arousing dreams she has sometimes, that she can never remember. It’s all that—and it really doesn’t help that he’s attractive, as she had thought from the day they had met.

Damn, she thinks, jumpy and wistful. I’m only twenty-one. He’s right. I should be seeing other people, not secretly fantasizing about my Enforcer.

But right now, she feels reckless and caught up in this moment, and she tips as he looks at her from under his sooty lashes.

“Are you done?”, He asks her.

“Yes,” She says and the word shivers from her mouth.

Her throat feels a little dry.

“Do you want to go to a dance with me?”

He looks taken aback. Surprise flits across his face, then he coaxes his face into a perfect poker face.

Akane shrivels with embarrassment.

“I thought—that we could go a club,” she says, feeling lame and small. “It’s only seven ’o’ clock—and well, none of us have work tomorrow—”

“You forgot Dime,” Ginoza cuts in smoothly. “He can’t go.”

Akane gulps and hopes the earth would open up and swallow her.

“Yeah,” She smiles, or tries to, face burning.

Ginoza looks at her, amusement flickering in his eyes.

“Do you want to come home for coffee?”, he offers.

*********

 

Sitting in his sofa, Akane feels the fatigue of the week settle deep in her bones.

“You look really tired.” Ginoza comments.

She looks up from the cup of hot chocolate she is holding. His eyes are trained on her with an unusual amount of focus, and she can barely stop herself from squirming under his gaze, especially after the incident in the restaurant.

“I am tired,” She confesses.

“Do you sleep enough?”, He asks.

Ginoza had always asked these sort of these questions. Even when she was the junior inspector and him the senior, these questions passed between them, not very personally, but with concern. Ginoza had always liked to worry, she thinks fondly.

“I try to.”

He knows she is dancing around it, but he doesn’t pry. Simply tilts his head back on the back of the smaller couch he is sitting on.

Akane can’t take her eyes off the long, pale column of his throat. She can see the blue, thick veins on either side of his neck, and she can’t look away. There is a soft warm glow in her mouth, and paper moons are dancing inside her diaphragm.

Too much alcohol. She is mortified.

She stands up.

“I think I will go now,” She says, and feigns an yawn.

As he shows her out, he places his fingers on her shoulder, holding and turning her for an instant.

Akane can feel the beat of her heart in her lips, and the rush of blood in her heart.

“Thank you for coming.” His eyes are black, in the overhanging shades, and his face is solemn.

Akane can barely thank him, and hurries to her car, secure in the knowledge that he didn’t see the red on her cheeks.

********

Home is cold and gray when she enters.

Candy greets her, and advises her to go to bed after giving her a full cymatic scan. She changes into a pair of old slacks and a tank top. Brushes her teeth, and snuggles under the covers.

She doesn’t know what is happening.

When Akane first joined Division 1, she had felt an amount of attraction to Kougami. It was quite natural, at least she thinks it is. Kougami was physically attractive and, his unapproachable attitude,, obsessive detective-work and slight inclination towards violence gave him a charisma that Akane had been drawn towards from the first day. Later, it had matured into something more tangible and mutual as they became more and more entangled in the web that Makishima wove around them. They had been kindred souls in a way.

They became entangled in each other too, only once, one late night.

It had been towards the end; right before all sense collapsed onto themselves. It was four ‘o’ clock, and it was just them, Yayoi excusing herself. They had moved towards each other, and when they fell towards each other, Akane had been dimly surprised at how easy it had been.

Shinya Kougami and Akane Tsunemori had kissed and held each other for a long time. There had been no words, because they both knew the inevitable was coming. In the meager comfort of one another lips and fingers, for one dawn, they had searched for the tree of salvation together.

Akane wants to curl up and weep now, because she feels like a traitor.

_What am I doing?_

She doesn’t know anything, doesn’t want to know anything. The feeling of guilt sits tight and dark inside her lungs even as her body stirs to unbidden images of Ginoza slithering in her mind.

Strange, but not surprising, if she allowed herself to touch the forbidden realm of her thoughts. It is not that she had been unaware of Ginoza’s attraction. There was something about those green eyes, something hidden under the bigotry in his manner that Akane had been aware of, like a thin skin on a demon's back. But with Kougami’s overpowering presence, and Ginoza’s own behaviour, it had faded into the echoes of her mind.

Akane was not a nun; and with this other Ginoza with the shadow of Kougami on his back, she feels herself slipping, even as feelings of guilt and betrayal clog her airways, and squeeze her heart.

_It’s been only seven months…._

Akane pushes her face into the downy pillow; one hand gripping her bedsheets, one hand sliding between her legs under the slacks.

As she orgasms, she weeps.

**********


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hi, Ginoza-san.” She says, and a breath of fresh jasmin, lemongrass and mint washes over him. She smells like freshness.

_ Ginoza _

 

Ginoza can feel her eyes. Even in the confines of his house, five miles away from her.

As they had eaten and talked, Ginoza felt her eyes on him, piercing and earnest, and still laced with something like kindness and fear. He doesn’t know where the fear stems from, and it makes him uneasy and restless. He can think of a couple of reasons for her to stare at him, the way she did and he doesn’t want to dwell on them.

He stands on the doorstep for a little while, even after the small black car had driven away, his mind twisting questions to wrest answers from them. He feels alone at the moment, now that she is gone.

He understands how deep he has sunk into his loneliness, drawing himself away from the world, downing cheap liquor when it didn’t seem to matter at all, just being away from everyone. And then she had come, and nudging him gently, had started the process of making a niche for herself. He also understands that it’s not probably very different from her condition. They are in this situation  at this moment , and he realizes that it both expands and contracts their perception. To which end and manner, he doesn’t know. 

She had needed to take him out today, and without his own knowledge, it seems that he had needed it as well.

It feels a little colorful to imagine what she thought of him, at the moment, to make cloud huts from the red that had bloomed over her cheeks when she had been caught staring . It’s simple to go down that slippery slope, and Ginoza turns his mind away firmly.

He was bored. So he wanted her to stay.

Ginoza goes to sleep with Dime on his feet, and a sense of contentment that he hasn’t felt in months.

********

When he wakes up, it’s 5:00 a.m.

Ginoza ambles to his backyard, muscles still stiff and jammed from sleep. Doing a few stretches, he pushes himself into his usual routine of a hundred push-ups, then a hundred burpies, and then crunches, and finally as sweat is dripping down his back, cold in the dawn chill and his body is liquid fire, he flows into the ancient movements of Tai-chi. it’s so effortless, and he feels his body taking over, and him entering the meditative state he had practiced to achieve since he was eleven years old.

He is submerged, coccooned into the depths of his mind. He feels red in his veins, cleansing and corroding, and blue flowers bloom all over his spine. He becomes the viper, catches the tail of the tiger and slivers of silver blossom.

He feels infinite.

Dimly aware that he is gushing from the liquid movements of Tai-Chi to the more powerful movements of Kung-fu, Ginoza curls on himself in the amniotic silence of his lizard-brain.

It is the only time when he is not rolling great hollows in the dark confines of his cranium, or trying to soothe the itch that makes him feel like he had stepped out of his skin for too long.

When he stops, it is morning, and the grass is slippery with dew. Birdsong is floating in the sun-warmed air, it’s going to be another windy day. He lets his tired legs collapse under him, and sweat is dripping into his eyes, and it burns. Running a hand through his hair, it’s soaked.

He lies for about half an hour, the sun warming his body and the sweat cooling in the breeze, feels the tickle of the grass on his bare back, the back of his hands and legs.  T he electric buzz of the saws of his mind gone, and he lies there, eyes closed, body relaxed, listening to the deep sound of no sound. 

*******

It’s Monday, and Ginoza is bored out of his mind and it’s only half-way through his shift.

Idle and frustrated, he leans his head back in the chair and stretches his neck. There is a crack.

There is Yayoi, and Shimotsuki here, today. Yayoi has her headphones on and a music sheet is fluttering in front of her, unaware of the covert glances that Shimotsuki shoots from behind her monitor.

Ginoza decides to count how many times she does that, just to pass time, and maybe tease Yayoi or Shion later.

After two hours of him keeping a sly gaze on the one-sided exchanges, he estimates it to be two glances a minute on an average. Poor Shimotsuki. She was headed into dangerous waters.

He grows tired at this too, and let’s his mind drift.

And not too much to his surprise, it drifts to Akane Tsunemori.

She has a evening shift today, so she won’t be coming until six o'clock in the evening, which means there are three hours left before he can get out of this bored doom, pun intended.

It would have nice if she was here, now. They could have played chess or something. As far as he knows, Shimotsuki doesn’t know how to play,(not that she would sully her pristine fingers by playing with a lowlife like him, he observes, slightly amused) and Yayoi was too engrossed in her music to play.

Lazily he reaches for his own headphones, and  _ _ Schön Rosmarin  _ _ _ fills his ears.  _

_ Three hours till Tsunemori comes and walks him home. The end result seems pleasant, so he tips his head back and closes his eyes, hoping the music would put him to a lull.  _

_ He falls into an uncomfortable nap. A tap on his shoulder wakes him. Akane’s face is looming over him, and the interior of the office is lit up by the fluroscencent  _ _ lights that emit from the lamps and the holo tablets.  _

_ “Hi, Ginoza-san.” She says, and a breath of fresh jasmin, lemongrass and mint washes over him. She smells like freshness.  _

_ He rouses himself from the post-sleep lazy ache in his bones, rubs his eyes and smiles at her. “Hello, Inspector.” _

_ Her face falls, maybe because he still calls her Inspector, but he feels it would be unprofessional to call her Akane, especially in front of  _ _ Shimotsuki.  _

_ “When are you leaving?” she asks him, watching his limbs bend and dispel the last traces of the nap. There is something acutely feline about the way he yawns and stretches, reminding her of a trim bobcat.  _

_ “If you are free to walk me back now, then now.” _

_ They look at each other, and Akane reads the thirst of a good conversation and open space in his eyes.  _

_ “Come on, Ginoza-san,” Akane says, smiling slightly. “Pack up.” _

  


_ ******* _

  


_ Wednesday day shifts gets over, and Ginoza yawns. It wasn’t a very bad day. They had arrested a latent criminal lurking about in the plaza. The man’s eyes had bulged with fear as the drones took him away. But since his crime coefficient was 110, and he had surrendered very easily, Ginoza suspected it was a temporary stress induced spike. The man probably will make a full recovery. _

_ And yet, even as he had pointed his dominator at the shaking middle-aged man, Ginoza had experienced a strange feeling of total acceptance towards the latter. He understands the man, he had thought. He had felt connected to the man in those moment. As the man had been led away, Ginoza hadd felt his fear, almost tasted it off the air, and he himself had felt fear.  _

_ It is disturbing, the empathy he had experienced. It is even more disturbing to think that he had maybe psychoanalzed the man, and it had made him feel the way the man, and now his mind is full of nebulous thoughts about what it means to label someone a criminal, latent or not, even with no crime comitted.  _

_ He wants to shake and dissolve these things in his head away, because the only results are generally simmering resentment, and a throb in his left temple.  _

_ He needs to get away from all this.  _

_ Akane is clearing the day's work up, her shift over. Ginoza walks to her desk. She lifts her head, and they exchange customary smiles. _

_ “Would you wait a moment, Ginoza-san?”, she says, her eyes trained on the document she is typing up. “I am nearly done.” _

_ “Sure.” _

_ Ginoza feels strangely shy and oddly hesitant as he words out his next sentence. There is a small ribbon of shame colouring it as well. It feels like overstepping some unnamed boundary.  _

_ “So, it was a slow day,” He says carefully, “Do you want to go out for a bite?” _

_ Akane’s face tries to hide the ripple of surprise. There is a small catch in her voice, when she says “Sure, why not”, and Ginoza doesn’t miss it. _

_ ***** _

_ They end up in fast-food joint. Ginoza watches Akane’s face screw up in concentration as she tries to choose from the plethora of unhealthy oily food. He scrunches his nose up a little. _

_ Ginoza’s senses, especially smell and hearing, had always been quite keen. Right now, the smell of boiling fat and the loud cackle of voices grate on his tired nerves. When Akane had suggested the place, the reason he had agreed was because well, he didn’t really know any other place. And since Akane would be paying and driving, he thought it was actually upto her to make the selection.  _

_ “Mmm,” Akane hmm-es to herself, caught between ordering a cheeseburger combo with double fries and a double hamburger. It was mouthwatering. She wants to barge into the kitchen and eat up the chefs—which was exactly how hungry she is. There is a hunger-induced delicious ache in the back of her lower-jaw. _

_ She finally chooses the cheeseburger, and licking her lips, turns to Ginoza, who is sitting quietly with the fingers of his hands interlaced. _

_ “Hey, what are you ordering?”, She asks as she looks over the menu card. “Aren’t you hungry?” _

_ “Is there tomato?”, he sounds a little wistful and sort of exasperated, and there is laughter bubbling up Akane’s stomach like champagne fizz at the utter ridiculousness of the request. _

_ Once she laughs herself light-headed, face hidden by her hands, she emerges, red faced and shiny eyed. _

_ Ginoza looks at her with disgruntled resignation, and asks her what’s so funny. _

_ “I can’t believe you asked for tomatoes in a Fast-food joint,” she chokes out, almost dissolving into another bout of mirth, “What’s more funny is that you don’t even get the joke, baka.” _

_ The word “idiot” carries a smatttering of pastel tenderness, and it embeds into the thin bones of his skull.  _

_ Even the coke and fries she orders for him seem almost bearable.  _

  


  


  


  


  



	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

 

“Maybe, I should take you to Joji Saiga.”

They are standing on the fortieth floor of the MWPSB Axis 0 building, leaning on elbows which are aching from the weight of their ribs. It’s windy again, like always, and Ginoza watches Akane pull out her hair again and again from her mouth. They are standing there, like two lonely kites, windswept and lost.

“Why, suddenly?”

Akane tucks back her hair behind, and Ginoza suddenly has a revelation: the delicateness of the lines of her jaw, her shell-like ear. There is a diamond drop earring on it.

“Kogami used to take me to her,” she tells him, and he doesn’t miss the slight tremor Kogami’s name gives her voice. He feels around for a comparison for her voice—and he finds wind-chimes and the sound of the  _Shakuhachi_. He catches himself—as he has been catching himself since she had looked at him with cheeks stained with cherry, under the lamplight from his porch.

“He was our instructor in the Academy.”

“He is very brilliant,” Akane smiles at him, the random smile she graces him with, “but the reason I wanted you to visit him because, I... don’t know how to say it.”

They are silent, as she gathers her thoughts.

“I think you should see him because of the way you got into Katanagi’s head. And Matsuru’s head. And the Kotoko twins case. All of them. That level of immersion or understanding is not good for anyone.”

Ginoza raises his eyebrow at her. “You do realise that it doesn’t really matter, since my Crime Coefficient is already high?”

“Doesn’t mean you would push it even higher.”

He shrugs. “Kogami used to take you to Joji Saiga to learn how to sniff better, if I am not very wrong. And now, you want me to go to Saiga to unlearn exactly that?”

“It’s not that,” She rolls her shoulder, “Joji Saiga is pathopschyologist, which means that one, he can actually tell you and guide you--”,she stops for a short breath, “and he can also provide a second opinion, to back you up in some of the more abstract conclusions you sometimes have a tendency to make.”

He doesn’t know if she’s just being protective or she’s afraid his instincts will lead them astray and to traps, and a hot flash of anger flares inside him like acid.

“I am a hunting dog,” He almost snarls the words at her, “And I am a good one. So, let me do my job--”

Akane can’t help snapping back at him, “Don’t call yourself a dog.”

He shrugs, and presses on. "--And when I make a mistake too many, put me down. God knows, that's easy enough."

Akane looks horrified, but the flame burns hotter inside him. He wants to walk away and shut the door in her face, even though he understands he is being irrational and childish, and he stands stiffly, eyes over the horizon.

The wind curls around them. His back feels stiff with a mixture of anger and embarrassment over his outburst, and out of the corner of his right eye, he can see Akane staring at him.

“Ginoza-san,” his name rolls off her tongue with a delicateness that relaxes the muscles on the back of his neck. “We know you are good at this, better than me. But there is always space to learn. I want you to learn from him. It will be a good experience, I promise.”

Ginoza just gazes at the fuzzy skyline, at the glittery buildings that are everywhere, and he says he is sorry.

He is sincere.

The last thing he feels before Akane departs inside, is her fingers skating over his lower back.

********

He visits the Enforcer’s Den that night.

It’s not exactly the first time he’s here. He had visited here once along with Kogami. It’s just his first time alone, and he is here, because he doesn’t know what quells the lonely hunger aching it’s way through his midriff. It doesn’t have a form, just is an amorphous pain coating his insides, just like the slippery sadness that grips him at twilight.

There are bright, flashy lights and hot, loud music shakes the air as the packed dance floor vibrates with the stamp of nearly fifty bodies. It’s a small space, and the smell of alcohol, heat and desire simultaneously repulses and draws him in. He sits on one of the stools beside the bar, covered in shadows, and sweat soaked his hair through and runs down his cheeks, back and arms. His body feels warm, and he feels a little feverish, after chugging seven drinks. He was never a heavy drinker, and as expected, the stuff starts to get to him, making him hot and strangely restless.

He longer is sure what he wants to do—drown in vodka or the sea. Or both.

Drunk and lonely and wanting, he stumbles to a low couch, and lets his head roll back on the back, his body feeling too tight to contain him, like he had forgotten how to wear it, feeling the imprint of Akane’s fingers on his back. Everything is hazy, and the lines between them, he can feel them washing away in the cresting waves of liquor and dejection. One night, he thinks, or maybe mumbles, because even that line has been erased, maybe just one night could make everything right or wrong or whatever. He doesn’t know, doesn’t know, doesn’t know--

There is the heat and the softness of another human body on his front, draping itself over him.

He opens his eyes, and there is a drunk girl—around his age—falling over him. He holds out his unsteady hand to steady her, and she does take his help—if only to straddle him. She is too drunk to keep her upper body straight, and he is too drunk to push her away—so, they end up with Ginoza sprawled on the couch, her sprawled on his chest.

And then her mouth is sucking his earlobe, wet and sharp—and he jumps as something crimson and hot shoot to his thighs. He feels strange—detached and disconnected to his body’s sharp, alcohol-fueled reactions—made clumsy and overwhelming by twenty-five years of suppression. His hands move without his knowledge—and he becomes the helpless observer of his surreal dream.

Yet, the feel of her is real against him. Her thighs are real, the pleasure radiating out of his groin as she grinds against him is real and tight and breathless, his mouth on her rapid pulse , the dark sweet pleasure of another human body, Akane will feel the same way over him, soft and hard and pliable and wanton—

She grabs his sweat soaked hair, hands slipping under his shirt—and Ginoza can’t help but put his hands on her hips and pressing her down to his growing erection.

She moans as he pushes his pelvis upwards. Guided by blind need and unreality, he slides his hands over her sides and cups her breasts, and suddenly realises, his eyes are tightly closed.

He doesn’t open his eyes, letting another ones face and hair and smell claim the body that wriggles and crawls and fondles him.

 

 

He has no idea how they end up in the toilet, or when his shirt was taken off or when was hers. He is more drunk than ever, and he suspects he must have drank more right before they headed to the toilet. It’s twelve in the night, and there’s just two horny, drunk people making out and groping each other in a graffiti-ed, seedy bathroom, falling over each with very human needs that the society condemns.

She turns away from him and her body spasms and recoils, and in an amazing display or control, she kneels and vomits into the commode. The sour smell of bile and alcohol, hits him as he kneels as well, pulling the hair out of her face.

He feels like throwing up.

After nearly fifteen minutes, after he can determine that she is more or less okay (as best as he could, in his current situation) he pulls her top over her head (They seem to have undressed in the bathroom), drapes his own over himself, picks her up and slowly walks out. The smell of piss gives him a vertigo.

After delivering her to a medico drone the bartender had called, Ginoza steps outside.

It’s drizzling. He’s too drunk to go his place along, even though the Den and his house is in the same MWPSB complex. He wants to see Akane. He doesn’t want to see her to see him like this.

Disjointed, staccato thoughts drum along his brain.

His body is burning with the swiftly fading memory of his momentary lust. It’s good that it is. He doesn’t want to do anything stupid that will make her disgusted.

So he spends standing in the soft, cold drizzle, letting sanity claim him a little, letting the heat and smell drain away from him. He looks like a mess, he knows, but oh well.

He calls Akane.

*******

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

 

Akane wakes up with a jerk. For two seconds, she doesn’t process anything. The blackness of a deep sleep surrounds her like a shroud.

Her holocomm is buzzing like an angry hornet on her bedside tablet; just looking at it makes her want to coccon up in her blanket. The shadow of the raindrops on her window are speckled over her, and the tiredness is ringing just under her skin on this dim, pleasant night. 

“No,” she mumbles, but because she is Akane, she reaches over and picks up the holocomm.

The caller-id shows Ginoza.

Her heart jerks tightly in the confine of her ribs; and she can feel the hammer beat of her pulse on her temple; he never, ever had called her this late, or this unexpectedly (she was pretty sure he knew her shift was over.) .

“Hello,” Her voice trembles just a tinny bit as she receives the call.

There is the sound of a slightly labored breathing in the background—is he injured?, she thinks, mind flying—then his voice comes, dark and thick with sleep or what, she can’t tell.

“Akane,” he says, “where are you?”

He doesn’t sound injured; yet there is something in his voice she had never come across before and her back and veins throb with  uncertainty and fatigue. 

“Home. Why? Are you okay?”

He breaths again.

“Could you pick me up from the Den? I don’t really think I can go back on my own.”

The Den? Why had he gone to the Den? What was he doing there, out of all places? And why was she, out of all people, supposed to go rescue him in the middle of the fucking night—when he couldn’t even—

Her voice is tight when she asks him to stay put and tells him she will be there in fifteen minutes, tops.

She doesn’t know if she’s more angry or sad or is it just the mind-boggling tiredness. She feels barren. She feels lonely and angry and furious that he was drunk and in the Den (everyone knew the reputation of that place) and calling her to pick him up, like she was his fucking minion. She feels taken for granted.

(There is a little part of her brain  that insists there is a bit of jealousy lurking around there somewhere)

She is sad and lonely, and angry at him for everything.

And in that moment, she wishes desperately, that he was Shinya Kougami.

**********

It’s cold and quiet, save the quiet plops and patter of rain against her car, as she drives  inside the MWPSB complex. The drones check her ID, and she smoothly slides down the black, slick road. 

T he enforcers campus  is beautiful and dark, hooded by swishing trees, drenched . 

As she pulled up in the parking lot beside the  Den, she could see a figure, alone standing in the foyer of the club, soaking in the silent fall,  leaning against the wall.

L ocking up the car, she  started towards him.

He was looking up to the skies when she stood beside him. She looked up too.

There were no stars in the red sky.

“Thank you for coming.”

“You are welcome.” she told him. “How drunk are you?”

He gave a mirthless laugh, and she detected something like madness in it. “More than ever.”

She could smell him, sweat and smoke and something floral. It made her feel awkward and annoyed at the same time. Ginoza had never smelt like that. That was the scent of Kogami carried after weekends.

The floral scent made her heart seize. He really must have been very drunk, but the anger that bubbled just inside her throat made her want to slap him and cry at the same time. She hated feeling like an teenager, hated feeling the flutter in her belly, and green in her blood.

“Let’s go,” She tells him.

He moves towards her, and she sees him wobble like a planet. He is indeed very drunk.

She shifts closer to him, and puts an arm under his, supporting him. He leans back, and she shakes for a moment as she adjusts herself to his weight. She tries to look into his eyes, and they look like murky emeralds.

He puts his head on hers, and she can smell sweat and the alcohol on his breath.

“I don’t feel good,” He whispers to her.

She feels worried and angry, and lost, for she has never handled a drunk Ginoza or her body while handling a drunk Ginoza.

“Do you want to throw up?”

She really doesn’t want his stomach’s fluids all over her, no matter how much she likes him.

He doesn’t answer, and continues leans against her. She can’t help think how beautiful his long eyelashes look when they brush against his cheek, and his bangs as they drip all over their forehead.

It is difficult to drag him to the car, but when she opens the door, he sort of rolls in. She huffs, heart beating faster than ever. She is soaked and cold and angry and sleepy.

Ginoza sits with legs outside the car, elbows on thighs, hands cradling face, hair askew. He convulses a little, and Akane moves away swiftly to the side as he vomits sourly on to the tarmac, body jerking forward and nearly out of the car. She puts her hand on his forehead, pulling his bangs away from his mouth as he retches. It’s sweaty and a little feverish, and he is shaking under her fingers.

Tenderness cuts through everything and rests warm and heavy in her midriff. He looks tired and young and helpless.

He is done, and the sour smell of regurgitated alcohol ties little knots in her stomach. He breathes through his mouth, long pants, lying against the car seat. He is a little tall for it.

Her hand is still on his face, and he leans into her touch, and Akane feels a sting high up her nose.

“Where do you want to go?”, she murmurs to him.

“Anywhere,” He replies, voice ragged and soft.

“Let’s go home then,” Her words are a quiet sigh.

 

*****

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually don't know what happens after they go home :P  
> Also, to anyone who is bothering to follow this, I am sorry for the long intervals and now, this short chapter. All the end of semester work is getting to me. I promise to update sooner and with longer chapters in the next months.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is the man she had seen in so many shades stretched out in front of her, a few feet away from her, sunk in the folds of the night.

 

 

He sleeps drunkenly, and Akane sits on the opposite, waiting for dawn to come.

They had come to his house. The door had been unlocked.

Dime had come, inquisitive and worried, whining softly. The big dog followed Akane and Ginoza as they stumbled their way to the sofa. Her shoulder was aching, and she was sweating even in the cold, clammy weather. 

“I’ll sleep ‘ere,” Ginoza mumbles, as he slips off her shoulder and settles on the sofa, head lolling and limbs askew, loose. The scent of drink and desperation hang in the space like smog. She feels a sharp sting in her spheroid joint as she rolls it. Dime circles around, wary and apprehensive.

“Do you want me stay?” she asks, softly, but he is already lost to sleep and intoxication. 

She decides to stay, and arranges her legs and back on the couch, and Dime places himself at her feet, head on paws, comfortably on the plush carpet, tail curled. 

First things first, she sends a message to Tsunemori and Kogane, notifying that Ginoza will be unavailable tomorrow, and Kogane needs to fill in. After a moment of consideration, she decides to message Tsunemori to request Aoynagi to fill in for the day for her as well, at least the morning shift. She is tired and spent, and there is some talking to be done. 

She leans herself back. The air smells like wood, and coffee and rain and something minty. There is the man she had seen in so many shades stretched out in front of her, a few feet away from her, sunk in the folds of the night. And here was she, exhausted and sleep-deprived and indulging in what she was hoping to pass off to herself as friendly kindliness that would warm the cockles of someone’s heart. All it does is making her infuriated and drained.

She thinks back to the moment when the comm. started ringing, and curses herself for picking it up, and damning herself for a night of trawling around drunk guys to whom she feels a nameless, formless attraction, a night on the sofa, owing favors to Aoynagi and Tsunemori, and a talk that would involve a lot amount of raised voices in the coming morning. She feels furious with the knowledge that even if time was rewind, and she was back to that second, she would adjudicate to do this all over again, with the fore knowledge. 

She is Akane, and the identity is deadening burden sometimes. Only sometimes. Good, little Akane. She wants to cry out of frustration at the leadenness in her fingers, the burn at the corner of her eyes, at Ginoza, at his callous behavior, at his flippant hook-up with some stranger. And most of all, she wants to weep at the cavernous, sepulchral ache in her chest that is throbs like a bruise from a rubber bullet. 

*****

She wakes up, cold. 

There is a moment of fumbling surprise; it is not her room, and it is never so quiet or dim in her apartment, and she is sleeping on a couch, in clothes that are uncomfortable on her skin.

The room had grown cold; she had forgotten to turn up the heat. She shivered, and drew up her coat around her tightly for the moment. Letting her eyes adjust to the shadows, she saw, in the passage of the night, Ginoza had pulled his booted  feet up on the sofa and was sleeping, arched, presumably due to the cold. 

She smiles a little; he would not be pleased to find the mud on the sofa. Getting up, she pads to the heat regulator, as Dime lets out a small bark and settles back into sleep, assured that there are no intruders, and cranked it up a notch. The change in the room is apparent, almost immediately. She walks noiselessly to the open bedroom and in the dark, with barely an awkward rummaging around, picks up the duvet from the small, single bed. 

Slipping back into the living room, Akane arranges the duvet over him, and he shifts and moans quietly in his doze. There is dull, blunt hammer blow to her heart. She returns to her perch on the couch, and tries to sink into the slumber like a submarine sliding the cold, black oceans. 

*****

Akane opens her eyes as the sun crawls up the bruised sky, her patchy sleep torn open by an insistent biting on her toes. 

Rain is hammering at the closed windows, a steady drum against the glass panes. Dime woofs at her, eyes bright and rump wriggling, clearly asking to go out for a walk. 

“Not today, old boy,” she hugs the husky, descending on to the carpet and scratching the furry neck, “Too rainy, right? Come on, we will make coffee.”

Dime sneezes sadly. 

Her back is rigid and aching from the awkward wriggling in the couch. She neither feels well rested nor sleepy, just a strange, greasy tiredness clinging everywhere, and a numbing headache, a clear symptom of sleep deprivation. A cup of coffee might be able to dispel it, at least short term. She needs a solid, dreamless sleep for at least eight hours for the boggy feeling to go away. It’s also the rain, and the cold. She sniffs, and sneezes. It seems she has caught a cold as well. Good that she had called in absent.

Ginoza is a lump under the brown duvet, black hair peeking out from the top, and legs dangling over the sofa. She will wake him after she feels a little more ready to have any sort of intellectual conversation with anyone. She sniffs again, and the dreadful feeling of a clogged nose sends a sharp pain up her face. She wants to throw something at someone. 

After attending to toilet for both herself, and Dime, she proceeds to the kitchenette. The coffee is hot and strong with a little bit of the powder milk she found on one of the shelves. The drink clears her sinuses a bit, but she can feel the inexorable creep of the cold settling in her lungs, and she curses Ginoza for dragging her out in the cold, chilly weather. She always had a high susceptibility to catching colds. 

She makes a second batch of coffee and proceeds to wake Ginoza. Its 7’o’clock in the morning, but the light is watery and mild, like a wash watercolor. Gray shadows cluster all around the house. 

She puts one hand on his shoulder, and shakes him gently. He wriggles into the eiderdown.

She pushes him. With a pained groan, he opens his eyes, framed by dark lashes and tired lines.

He stares at her with a mixture of undisguised horror and surprise. 

“You are here.” He says. 

She nods. Mortification blooming in shades of pale pink on his cheeks, he pushes off the comforter and sits up. And pain ripples on his face. 

“Bad hangover?” she asks, not unkindly. She offers him the bottle of electrolyte she had made. 

“Drink up,” she tells him, “You vomited, and fell asleep before I could get you to drink any water. You should be really dehydrated. There’s a T-Formic mixed in it, for the headache.”

He drinks like he’s dying of thirst. After a few big gulps, he lowers the bottle. “Akane, I’m really sorry—“she holds up a hand to stop him. 

“Go shower,” she sniffs and suppresses a sneeze, “I will make some breakfast. I took the day off for both of us. We will talk about it when you are more comfortable.”

She feels oddly tender, looking at his genuinely abashed face. He doesn’t just look abashed; he looks guilty, and angry.

“I’m sorry,” he says stiffly. “About everything that happened last night.”

“I know,” she sighs. “We will talk about it. You smell awful.”

*****

  


  


  



	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

 

When he disappears into his room, Akane pushes back all the broken little edges inside and prepares to take a measure of his kitchen.

 Tongue in cheek, apron around her (it is ridiculously large), she shifts about his meager supplies like a particularly ardent ferret. There is sugar, flour and eggs, and even a small bottle of vanilla essence. She wonders if he bakes himself cakes in his free-time. Somehow, it is slightly unimaginable.

 Always the optimistic enthusiast, she decides to make waffles. The recipe appears in her omnidevice in a few keystrokes, and in a flurry of movement and well intended mismanagement, Akane Tsunemori bravely embarks on the way to waffles.

 

****

She is sitting in the couch, with a pile of waffles, some a little soggy and some a little burnt. Ginoza looks at them for a full twenty seconds, and she blushes hotly. She readies her argument to his expected laugh(does he know she never even knew how to make omelettes? Ugh.)

 Instead, he surprises her as always. There is a hint of a smile in his voice. 

 “How do you eat the ready-made food?”

 Akane pouts.

 “Well, we can’t all be expected to have a fad for cooking,” she says, a little snappish. “And you could have just delivered the criticism on my face.”

 “I shall not forget how much you undervalue tact.”

 She snorts. "Tact is not the same as undisguised sarcasm.”

 “There is no flattery involved.” He tells her, eyes shining, as he sits down. “Only concern. It is genuine, as well.”

 She shakes her head at him, and there is a feeling of helium inside her stomach.

 

*****

Two bites later, the cook in Ginoza can’t help but pop-up like a jack-in-the-box.

 “I don't think you mixed it right. The proportions are all wrong.”

 Akane riles up, a little defensive, a little amused. “I took it from a well-known site.”

 This time, he simply snorts. “And where did you find the measuring cups and so on?”

 “Instinct.. Err?”

 Ginoza laughs, and for once it isn’t from the dark, little place he always seems to carry inside him.

 

****

Snide comments aside, he wolfs down almost four, and she is left with roses in her throat, and they raise welts and scratches on her sternum, and her blood is tenderness today. When he finally puts his plate down, she can see that his eyes are forest green once more, and his lips are tilted down.

 “I’m sorry for everything last night.” His spine is stiff, and his voice is sincerity personified. She wants to kiss him and slap him, and all she does is gaze at him, and they are both hurting inside. She knows, just like Kougami, he is sorry for the wrong things. 

 She wants to spill the beans and lay the cards, surely then, he would lay his too, and then they would see. She wants to tell him, it wasn’t right of him, to call her. She wants to tell him that he can’t, he just can’t put himself in her hands, so vulnerable and open.

 Instead, she does what she does.

 “It’s all right,” (Her neck throbs with all the bitter and angry and tender words, those are dying a screaming death at the back of her mouth) “It's okay. I am not angry at you or anything.”

He looks at her, disbelief clouding his gaze. Akane sighs, and proceeds to elaborate this one little white lie, injecting little truths in it. "I am not angry that you called me. But I was worried about you--," she takes a breath, " You in that state of mind. I--"

Akane sees Ginoza's eyes flicker with barely concealed annoyance. He knows she is referring to his crime coefficient and the impact of alcohol on its instability. She is lost for words for a second, the space between her shortening heart beats, as she sees the shadow of Kougami grow on him, as she remembers him vomiting out the alcohol, the sharp scent of flowers on him, like rotting things. Akane's anger rises like bile in her mouth, at his gross irresponsibility, at his uncaring hopelessness, at her jealousy--and these words must be told, so she speaks, braving his ire, and honing her fury to combat it.

"I know you don't care." She says, and she knows what to say to hurt the most, (it is the truth, the terrible powers of true things), "You don't care about anything or anyone--and that is why you did it--risking your crime coefficient, risking imprisonment. But I care about you--you are my friend, and we are the only ones. They are all gone", Her voice almost breaks, and her stomach is in knots, and he is middle of registering the shock of the slap her words are administering,"They are all gone. We are the only ones left."

His face is blurred now, her eyes burning with the brunt of her words, but she wipes her eyes, and Ginoza is looking at her, and his face is a study of anger and hurt and pain slowing to regret. He looks stricken, never taking her eyes off her, and her hands under the green of  his gaze. He runs a hand over his face, sparing her for a second, and when they lock eyes after, they have only memories and regrets. 

"You are wrong," He says, softly, and Akane cannot ask him what she's wrong about because her throat is squeezed shut by the ghosts of their friends,"But I didn't think it through. It was just once."

 “And then?”

 It’s a raw spot, and there are guilt and pleasure in hitting it.

 “I wouldn't repeat it.” He mumbles, and she struggles in an underwater ravine.

 “It’s fine,” She tells him, pretending that the helium hasn’t escaped already, fading into the nothingness. “Lunch is on you though.”

 He breathes, and she can’t tell if it’s a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to talk about this or just that she didn’t willingly spoil lunch also.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to post a bit of short chapters for a while, recovering from a strong writers' block. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Please R&R!  
> This is going to be mostly non-canon  
> Also, here the Sybil system governs the world, not just Japan. And Ginoza lives in a special protected area where latent criminals who are exceptional in their own way are housed.


End file.
